A Common Core study group

I have two boys going into public high school next year and I am concerned. When I first heard about the Common Core educational standards I was hopeful that they would establish an appropriate bar for both educating our children and, in part, evaluating their teachers. Since then I have heard, read, and seen far more opposition to the Common Core than support for it. I think it is time for me to understand the Common Core for high school. And for this I need to read and understand it. Doing so alone and without guidance and/or interpretation is mostly likely impractical. In the past I have benefited from using a study group to understand our state's budget. I think I need the same here.

If you are interested in creating a Common Core study group please contact me either via Facebook, email at andrew@andrewgilmartin.com, or telephone 401-441-2062.

Installing Java 6 on OS X Mavericks

I need to be able to build and run Java tools under Java 6. When I got my new MacBook Pro I also got an unexpected problem and that is that there is no Java 6 for OS X 10.9. Or perhaps I should say that I did not know enough to know if I could get Java 6 for OS X 10.9. And so the machine become used as a very fast web browser.

Today I decided to make some effort to get Java 6 running. If this machine were Linux or Windows I would not have this issue. The Java packages for these operating systems use the standard Java distribution and configuration. Not so with Apple's Java. It seems like a mess to me when I compare both the standard distribution's file and directory names to Apple's and even between Apple's OS X Java 6 and Oracle's OS X Java 7. Clearly, I am not an Apple developer.

Apple's Java 6 package can be downloaded from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572.

I don't really need Java 6 to run, I only need Java 7 to compile and run like Java 6. And for this I only need to configure the existing Java 7 javac and java commands correctly. I am glad of this as I have no confidence that Apple's Java 6 installer will leave my existing Java 7 installation working. I will need to cheery pick what I want from Apple's Java 6 installation package ... and hope for the best. And hoping for the best is acceptable as, after all, this MacBook Pro is a development machine and so it can be a little rough and idiosyncratic.

I used the shareware tool Pacifist to extract the JavaForOSX.pkg sub-package to my ~/lib/ directory. (Pacifist is very easy to use and so I could skip understanding pkgutil.) I renamed the installed root directory from "JavaForOSX Folder" to ~/lib/jdk1.6.0 and fixed the permissions.

My builds are handled by Ant and so I need to tell the javac task to use Java 6 for source and target, and to point the bootclass to the Java 6 jars.

<path id="java6.bootclasspath">
  <fileset dir="${env.HOME}/lib/jdk1.6.0/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Classes">
    <include name="**/*.jar"/>
  </fileset>
</path>

<javac
  source="1.6"
  target="1.6"
  bootclasspathref="java6.bootclasspath"
  ... >
  ...
</javac>

The compile now works. Have not yet tried to run, however. Running is for another day.

Shane Koyczan

To remind my sons. Shane Koyczan is brilliant. Three worthy prose poetry performances by him are Remember How We Forgot, To This Day, and Why Does This Man's Grandfather Fight Monsters?.

Not that many really good ideas worth spreading?

My Facebook friends have been turning on TED and TEDx for a bit mostly because they have been pulling talks that don't fall within the traditional notions of science. I can't say I blame them -- friends and TED/TEDx. Especially when few people really understand that TED and TEDx are difference conferences altogether and TED/TEDx does not respect that many in their audience are rational, spiritual beings. For example, pulling Sheldrake's talk is really unfortunate as his is an interesting perspective on Eastern and native peoples spiritualism in Western science clothing. (Others that were pulled seem to me to be little more than entertainment presentations. That is, I don't care.) With that said, TED is a business — they sell conferences — and so they can edit (not censor, only governments do that) as they want. The challenge is for another conference organization to build the same name recognition as TED but in areas TED fears to tread. Let's look for them and support them.

In the end, however, I think what might be happening is that there simply are not that many really good ideas worth spreading!

W.A.I.T

When wanting to talk WAIT: That is, ask the question "Why am I talking?"

Non-NISO duration standard

My peers have adopted the following non-NISO duration standard:

• Shortly is less than 17 mins or 29 mins.
• In-a-bit is less than 29 mins.
• Half-hour is 30 to 50 mins.
• In-a-while is about 1 hour.
• Later is about 2 hours.

YMMV.

Too little skeuomorphism!

I find iOS 7's UI boring rather than utilitarian and/or minimalistic. I am, frankly, surprised at my reaction to this utilitarianism as it is something I have wanted for some time. How I have it, I think Apple went too far in removing the skeuomorphism.

Shipping container building inspiration

Found at http://cubiclerefugee.tumblr.com/post/596714844

I am Geordi LaForge. Really!?

Your results: You are Geordi LaForge. You work well with others and often fix problems quickly. Your romantic relationships are often bungled.

Geordi LaForge 70% Spock 64% Jean-Luc Picard 60% Mr. Scott 60% Beverly Crusher 60% Worf 55% Chekov 55% James T. Kirk (Captain) 50% Data 46% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 45% Uhura 40% Will Riker 40% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 35% Mr. Sulu 10% Deanna Troi 10%

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Test

Using a compound index to reduce lock timeouts with MySql 5.5

If you use MySql 5.5 and have a hot table where updates and inserts fail due to lock timeout then the following will be of interest. The SQL statement

update t1 set c1 = ? where c2 = ?

Will (effectively) lock the WHOLE TABLE unless there is a compound index on the columns used in the update. Adding the index

create index i1 on t1(c2,c1)

will allow MySql's locking mechanism to only lock the records touched by the update and not the whole table.

My public library (and, I am guessing, so does yours) uses X's library catalog web application. If free time were more I would enumerate its comprehensive collection of poor to dreadful user-experiences. But I don't and so I won't. This posting is a trivial example of

Chain of Command and the storm in a tea cup.

I took down my post about my objection to having advertising in the opening pages of the Chain of Command rules book. While I continue to object to having advertising at the front of a paid product I now know better that my expectations are quite different (even quaint) than the general expectations of both rules buyers and rules publishers. If you want to know more about how this played out, then see the thread on Too Fat Lardies Yahoo! group (this is a private group so you must join to see postings).

Clipping my magpie wings & I healing my crow wings.

I deactivated my Facebook account. I deleted my Instapaper account. I deleted my (RSS reader) goread.io account. I deleted my Delicious account. And others are going sooner than later. I am tired of have all these virtual stacks of unread stuff scattered around my virtual desk. I have enough physical stacks of unread stuff that really needs my attention -- and is, more often than not, deserving of that attention. I am clipping my magpie wings and I am healing my crow wings.

I don't customize my Mac very much. Too much bad experience from my thirty years of personal computer support. So when I do add a customization has to have high utility. The following is the small set of enhancements I use Yoink BusySync

Developers and Depression

I work in an industry whose participants have little connection to their own behavioral and emotional life. I consider myself an escapee more than a survivor. (Thanks Chris!) It is also rare at a technical event there would be a session called "Developers and Depression". But here it is: Developers and Depressiongiven by Greg Baugues on August 16 2013 at Steel City Ruby in Pittsburgh, PA.

Developers and Depression from Confbots on Vimeo.

If your presence doesn't work, neither will your words.

“If your presence doesn't work, neither will your words.” - Yogi Bhajan

GNU Screen cheat-sheet

SCREEN

starting screen

     named

          screen -S name

     within sudo

          script /dev/null
          screen -S name

disconnecting

     ^a d

reconnecting

     screen -x foo
     screen -x user/foo

listing

     screen -ls

$HOME/.screenrc

     hardstatus alwayslastline "%w %= %H "

     defscrollback 10000

     multiuser on
     addacl user1
     addacl user2
     addacl userN

help
     ^a ?

WINDOW

new window

     ^a c
     ^a : screen

title window

     ^a A name
     ^a : title name

close window

     ^a k
     ^a : k
 
     using ^d at the shell prompt will close end the current shell and so close the window.

select window

     ^a number
     ^a : select number

select next window

     ^a backspace
     ^a : prev

read-only window

     ^a : chacl * -w number

read-write window

     ^a : chacl * +w number

REGION

new region (aka split) 

     ^a S
     ^a : split     

select next region

     ^a tab

resize regions (equally)

     ^a : resize =

close region

     ^a X
     ^a : remove

close all regions except the current region

     ^a Q
     ^a : only

SCROLL-BACK
 
view
 
    ^a esc
 
page back
 
    ^b
 
page forward
 
    ^f

finished
 
    esc esc
 
END

See http://aperiodic.net/screen/start for an online manual.

Getting OS X to use the application you want to open a document type

I had a little problem where Chrome was not the default viewer for XML documents on my Mac. Using the "Open With..." dialog to select the application to use with the document did not stick. In the end I used the duti utility, eg

duti -s com.google.chrome text/xml all

and this seems to have worked. Will see if it continues to work after a reboot.

The other problem is what are the applications, UTIs, or MIME types that can be used? The command

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -dump | grep ...

can be used to investigate. Further, I found a reference to AllApplications which will also help.

How will the driverless car affect the design of our cities?

My comment on How will the driverless car affect the design of our cities?

A car allows me to get to a destination for specific purpose. For example, I don't "go to work" any more. I work where I am. Most of the time this is from my home. Other times, it requires that I be in proximity and cooperation with others. The car gets me to this work. Had not my employer contracted to use a specific location for this communal work, ie "the office", then all the participants would travel to a mutually agreed upon facility. In a car. With a self driving car I could continue to work where I am.

I do understand that my work allows for this. And that this is not true for everyone.

What interests me about my comment is that I now see that my advocating for mass public transport needs to be reviewed to account for the current facts and numbers regards who (workers in this case) that could actually take advantage of it.

Check the checkers

Always, always ensure that automated processed are checked by independent automated processes. If you don't do that then make sure the automated processes are very chatty -- email, SMS, smoke signals. etc. Well, err, perhaps not the last one as I am sure it would scare the data-center staff.